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Mentally ill people have been responsible for some of the year’s most horrific crimes — including murders and rapes — yet authorities are nearly powerless under current law to sweep them from the streets.

Accused subway pusher Naeem Davis said he was off his meds for bipolar disorder and hearing voices before victim Ki Suk Han was killed by an oncoming train last Monday.

Davis, 30, had been living in a homeless shelter.

“The state Office of Mental Health says they can’t be treated until they [show they] are a danger to themselves or others,” said DJ Jaffe, a mental-illness policy analyst. “Rather than prevent violence, the law requires it.”

If Alzheimer’s patients are found wandering the streets, cops take them to a hospital no matter how loud their protests. But if a delusional schizophrenic sleeping on a subway platform turns down help from a concerned cop or homeless-outreach worker, then little can be done.

Until that person lashes out violently, that is.

For instance, OMH declined to commit Jonathan Stewart, a violent sex offender, to psychiatric treatment in 2009 after he spent five years in prison for two sex assaults. He ended up in a homeless shelter, then allegedly raped a 21-year-old woman in Hudson River Park last September.

Another schizophrenic off his meds, Curtis Forteau, wasn’t being forced to receive treatment despite years of violent outbursts.

After his most recent stint in jail, he spent a year in a residential facility but was out on probation in January. He soon stopped taking his medication and suddenly went berserk on East 86th Street in July, allegedly plunging his knife into innocent passerby Sabatha Tirado. She survived.

“Those out on the street when they are the most ill are not going to have any insight that they are ill and need help, and that’s why they turn it down,” said Mary Lee Gupta, a program director with the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City.Cops say they fear the mentally ill, dubbed EDPs for emotionally disturbed persons, the most.

“You have a lot of homeless EDPs, a lot of cases like the guy with the knife in Times Square who was shot down by the cops,” said one plainclothes cop in Midtown. “They should put these people in hospitals, mental wards. But you can’t force them to go unless they are a danger to themselves or somebody else.”

The cop was referring to Darius Kennedy, a 51-year-old Long Island man with a history of arrests and at least one trip to Bellevue’s psych ward. He was shot dead by cops he was menacing with a knife in August.

State and federal laws generally allow anyone to refuse medical treatment, including the mentally ill.

But, an unfortunate symptom of schizophrenia as well as a treatment-resistant bipolar disorder is anosognosia — they don’t even realize they are sick.

After Andrew Goldstein, a schizophrenic off his meds, pushed Kendra Webdale, 32, to her death at the 23rd Street N-train subway station in 1999, the state started to take notice.

The state legislature enacted Kendra’s Law, which allows the courts to order a sick person to receive outpatient treatment — and compels providers to treat them. Statewide, there about 1,850 individuals being treated under Kendra’s Law.

Yet plenty of sick — and dangerous — people fall through the cracks.

In the past weeks, images of shoeless Jeffrey Hillman getting a pair of new boots from a selfless cop, raised the question how the homeless man could remain on the streets like that.

Hillman, who has a slew of arrests for harassment, menacing and public lewdness, had been on the radar of the city’s Department of Homeless Services for years.

He was even given a federally subsidized apartment in The Bronx but still spends his time wandering around Manhattan begging.He even continued to walk the streets barefoot after receiving his now-famous pair of boots.

A trend that began under the Reagan administration of de-institutionalizing psychiatric patients in favor of “community-based” care has led to the dumping of the mentally ill on city streets.

“There just aren’t enough services for everybody,” said Gupta.

“They get into the criminal justice system rather than get into psychiatric hospital and then receive little or no treatment,” she said. “The criminal justice system ends up having more psychiatric patients than hospitals.”

Kristy Leibowitz

OFF HIS MEDS:Schizophrenic Curtis Forteau was on the streets despite years of outbursts when he allegedly stabbed a passerby on the Upper East Side in July.chuck.bennett@nypost.com

The liberal solution to a lot of this would be more funding for mental health. Conservatives don't want to hear it.

If I had my way, all people who were diagnosed with something serious such as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder would be committed until the psychiatrist declared they could rejoin society (or declared they didn't have to be locked up in the first place, treated as outpatient). Conservatives don't want to spend the money on it. I view this as their fault.

The liberal solution to a lot of this would be more funding for mental health. Conservatives don't want to hear it.

If I had my way, all people who were diagnosed with something serious such as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder would be committed until the psychiatrist declared they could rejoin society (or declared they didn't have to be locked up in the first place, treated as outpatient). Conservatives don't want to spend the money on it. I view this as their fault.

That's bullshit, these people need to be institutionalized and they refuse to do it, leaving them in the street to prey on society is the problem not money.

The difference between pigs and people is that when they tell you you're cured it isn't a good thing.

The liberal solution to a lot of this would be more funding for mental health. Conservatives don't want to hear it.

If I had my way, all people who were diagnosed with something serious such as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder would be committed until the psychiatrist declared they could rejoin society (or declared they didn't have to be locked up in the first place, treated as outpatient). Conservatives don't want to spend the money on it. I view this as their fault.

Sorry Lanie. The leftist solution has led to what we have now, mentally ill people making their own decisions. As you can see, it has not worked for the betterment of the public at large or the mentally ill...

Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
Ronald Reagan

We could say they are spending like drunken sailors. That would be unfair to drunken sailors, they're spending their OWN money.
Ronald Reagan

The liberal solution to a lot of this would be more funding for mental health. Conservatives don't want to hear it.

If I had my way, all people who were diagnosed with something serious such as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder would be committed until the psychiatrist declared they could rejoin society (or declared they didn't have to be locked up in the first place, treated as outpatient). Conservatives don't want to spend the money on it. I view this as their fault.

Lanie...is this serious? That's all you have? It's "conservatives" fault because we'd like to contain out of control spending? You have to do better.

Tell you what...let's just get to the facts:

The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush in October 2008. Prior to that, insurers were not required to cover mental health care and as a result access to treatment was limited, underscoring the importance of the act.

Wellstone is a Dem. Domenici and the great GW are Republicans. That means that 2 out of the 3 major players involved with the law that increased coverage and spending for mental health care were...wait for it...Republicans. OMG, no, really? Well, yes they were!!

OT: One side note on out of control spending. The $60 Billion dollar federal aid bill the Demoscums want for Hurricane Sandy relief...only about $9 Billion is needed right now. Read about it and the $13 Billion they want that has nothing to do with Hurricane relief here and here.

SARASOTA - The city's aggressive efforts to remove the homeless from public parks was dealt a setback this week when a judge tossed out a ban on smoking in those spaces, and yet another law aimed at the homeless — this one prohibiting panhandling — may also end up in the courts.

So we're going to be stuck with a collection of smoking bums. Where are they getting the $$$ for expensive smokes
one might ask??? (Unless you're a LibTard) Why from panhandling of course!!!

-more-

Sarasota attorney Andrea Mogensen, an ACLU board member, said she represented more than a dozen homeless people who had been cited for smoking in city parks, some of whom told her that they did not even smoke.

“We're very, very pleased. This takes away one of the tools the city has been using to respond to the homeless problem with police power,” Mogensen said. “The decision permits people to do what they're constitutionally allowed to do, what state law allows them to do. The city can't regulate smoking.”

Ahhh, wait a sec, can't regulate smoking??? What have Libtards been trying to do for years? But now it's "bad".

So now, we get this shit...

Police may have enforced the smoking ordinance as a way to respond to neighborhood complaints over problems that arose with some homeless people, City Manager Tom Barwin said, but that will no longer occur.

The city will be taking a more holistic approach to homelessness and improve coordination, Barwin said.

Holistic??? Fuck that!! Throw them in the bay!!!!

Ideally, a homeless person who is an alcoholic would be referred to treatment, Sutton said. Or if someone is repeatedly arrested for violating the ordinance against panhandling — which the ACLU wants to do away with — the police would connect them with counseling, job service and housing organizations, he said.

JHC...these "do gooders" are just fucking morons!! Job counseling??? The scum are HOMELESS BUMS, I've seen them!!!! I don't think the Ritz Carlton is going to be hiring many.

The liberal solution to a lot of this would be more funding for mental health. Conservatives don't want to hear it.

If I had my way, all people who were diagnosed with something serious such as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder would be committed until the psychiatrist declared they could rejoin society (or declared they didn't have to be locked up in the first place, treated as outpatient). Conservatives don't want to spend the money on it. I view this as their fault.

It wasn't conservatives who deinstitutionalized the mentally ill who ended up becoming homeless, it was liberals who decided that institutionalization was a violation of their rights to life, liberty and publicly soiling themselves. It was liberals who used the crisis that they created as a bludgeon for more funding for public housing, welfare and social programs. It was liberals who filed suit against every single attempt to pick up the craziest of the crazy and get them the help that they needed. The most blatant example was the case of Billie Boggs (Joyce Patricia Brown, she took the Boggs name because of her obsession with local TV host Bill Boggs), a homeless woman in NYC who was completely out of her mind. She was picked up after years of public psychotic behavior, but the activists got her released just long enough to clean her up and medicate her for her hearing. She was lucid enough to convince the judge to let her go, and that ended the attempts to reinstitutionalize her and others like her, but the icing on the cake was when they got her some lucrative speaking gigs, including one at Harvard. She ended up with close to $100,000 and blew it all in a couple of weeks at the Plaza, then ended up back on the streets, where she died. The homeless were a convenient means of attacking Republican administrations (note their disappearance from the news when Democrats were in the White House) and an indictment of the capitalist economy that they loathed. They're a prop to liberals, nothing more, and your attempt to blame conservatives for their plight is just part of the despicable charade.

So we're going to be stuck with a collection of smoking bums. Where are they getting the $$$ for expensive smokes
one might ask??? (Unless you're a LibTard) Why from panhandling of course!!!

-more-

Ahhh, wait a sec, can't regulate smoking??? What have Libtards been trying to do for years? But now it's "bad".

So now, we get this shit...

Holistic??? Fuck that!! Throw them in the bay!!!!

JHC...these "do gooders" are just fucking morons!! Job counseling??? The scum are HOMELESS BUMS, I've seen them!!!! I don't think the Ritz Carlton is going to be hiring many.

Liberals don't have a problem with smoking, they have a problem with restaurants and bars being allowed to set their own policies. It's about power, not health. Anything that a homeless person does to make himself more noxious just makes it harder for the bourgeoisie to ignore them and provides more fodder for their indictments of capitalism and our heartless government, at least when it's run by Republicans.